Everything you want
by TwoStepsBehind
Summary: Musings of two young people as the war around them comes to head. Choices are made and the consequences will follow.


Everything you want.

**Somewhere they're speaking**

**Somewhere they're coming in**

He ran his fingers through his black hair, worry lines creasing his young face. The rumours of a war were turning into reality. Before they had been just whispers in the dark, mere murmurs in well known pure-blood circles; but now people were openly declaring their allegiance to the Dark Side, openly showing their disdain for the mud-blood that was tainting their pure-blood world. It had been a long time coming, and honestly he was surprised that it had started so late. Many were approached by both the sides; the Death eaters or the others that fought for the rights of muggle-borns, the ones who didn't believe in this sort of barbarity. He like every other pure-blood had been approached to join the circle of Death eaters, by none other than Lucius Malfoy himself.

He sighed; he would be a liar if he said he hadn't considered joining the death-eaters. Well ever since he had heard about the Dark Lord, he had sounded like a formidable enemy, and a powerful ally; it was safer, easier to be on his side in troubled times like these. Needless to say, he was tempted, very tempted.

**Oh and it's rising in the back of your mind**

But what about _her_? He sighed, running his hand through his hair again. He didn't have many friends; in fact she was the only real friend he had. His father was a drunken abusive bastard who didn't give a damn about him and he didn't give a damn about his father. His mother had died last year, giving up on her husband, her life, leaving her son to fend off the demons on his own. In short there wasn't anyone he cared about and no one really cared about him. Plenty made it their personal mission to make his life hell and there wasn't much he could do about it. Somewhere in the middle of being bullied at home by his father and bullied in school by the Prat Princes, he had decided that he had had enough. It was time to take matters into his own hands; it was time to show people what he was made off, to show them that he wasn't going to take their bull shit any longer.

**You never could get it**

**Unless you were fed it**

For so long he had wanted to just be accepted, for people to realize that he wasn't as worthless as he was made out to be. Coming from such a broken home he didn't know how to act around people, he didn't know people, period. But this lack of knowledge had been twisted around by a group of immature boys who thought that the only way one could look good was by making someone else look bad; and as they say first impressions are last impressions, the distorted picture they painted of him as an awkward eleven year old trying to fit in was stuck in everyone's mind and nothing he did seemed to change it. Even now, around his friends he had to put up a front, pretend to be someone he wasn't; he accepted their ideals and beliefs just so he would have someone to be around. But then again they weren't his real friends, people who he could count on; they were just stepping stones to his success. After all these years, he had realized that it was best not to trust anyone, not to get too close to anyone cause eventually they either weren't what you thought they were or something always went wrong and the person would just walk away. So to spare himself the pain, he just stopped caring, or least that's what he thought he was doing; after all denial wasn't just a river in Egypt.

**Now you're here  
And you don't know why**

But she, she had always been his friend. Before school and through most of the years they had been in school. People had always talked about their relationship; most of them wondered what a girl like her was doing, wasting her time with a nobody like him and the rest of them found it simply unacceptable. His friends fell in the latter category. But she didn't care; even when her friends criticized him, saying a person like him could never be her friend, she would stand up to them, heck she would fly into a temper, defend him; she was never ashamed of him; she knew what he was underneath it all. And in the beginning he didn't care either. But later, after he realized how ruthless his friends really were, he tried to hide their relationship, end it even. He pretended that a person like him would never be friends with someone like her, but she would see right through him; he pretended that he had stopped caring; anything to keep her safe, even when his feelings for her were growing by the day.

Day by day his façade grew stronger, and it seemed that she was the only one doing everything she could to prevent their friendship from falling to pieces, she started to think that maybe he was indeed what they had been saying all along. It broke his heart when he saw the hurt in her eyes when he called her a mud-blood in front of everyone after their OWLs, she had covered up well but he knew her enough to see the hurt flash when no one else could. That was the end; she gave up. Her best friend was lost. He had successfully severed ties. He knew that he would never be allowed to show his love for her, but the fact that he couldn't even be friends with her, that was it.

From that day onwards, he was a different person. Every flaw of his was covered, every weakness hidden well. Every step, every action, every thought was well choreographed. Nothing seemed to hurt him, nothing fazed him; he stopped feeling. He had just been a person who was happy with the one person he loved, the one who was his only friend. What business was it of others, to judge their relationship? Because of a few prejudiced stuck-up blue bloods, he had lost the single best thing in his life. That day he lost his faith, his hope; he had lost her.

When she started dating _him_ in the beginning of their seventh year, his anger had known no bounds. Of all people! He had taken it as the ultimate betrayal, even though it was because of him that they weren't friends anymore; when he was the one who had hurt her so badly. But in his anger, he wasn't thinking rationally. When the one person he cared up had apparently given up so easily what was the point of fighting the darkness that was there within him, he succumbed to it. He was pretty sure that the path he wanted to follow was that of the death eaters.

What would she say when she found out what he was planning to do? After all what she thought meant the most to him; she meant the world to him. He loved her with everything that he had, but he had hurt her in the worst possible way and she wasn't going to forgive him for it; not this time. So did it really matter what she thought anymore? Did he really have what it takes to kill another human being? Would he be able to point his wand at someone and chant the killing curse, watch the light in their eyes extinguish. Would he be able to do that to _her _if the situation called for it? After all, she was one of them too. Which brought him to the most important question, did he really believe in the ideals of the group he was so interested to join, or was it just that he didn't have what it takes to really stand up to things and he was taking the easy way out?

He let out a sigh of frustration, taking the easy way out was the cowardly way, and he wasn't a coward. Taking a break from his thoughts, he concentrated on the evening around his. Twilight; neither day nor night, that's exactly how he felt, neither here nor there. What was he going to do, helplessness took over, and in that nervousness, he looked around as if the answer to his dilemma was hidden in the landscape around him; and that's when he made his decision, turning around, walking back to his common room. 'Death-eaters it is, then,' he thought, anger within threatening to explode.

**But under skinned knees and the skid marks**

**Past the places where you used to learn**

She shook her head, unable to believe that Mary, the girl with whom she had shared a dormitory for almost seven years was dead; murdered. Why? What was her mistake, what was the reason she was so ruthlessly murdered, in her own bed, on Christmas day nonetheless. She was murdered, simply because she was muggle born; because she didn't come from a line of wizards dating back to the Middle Ages; apparently because her blood was impure.

She had heard rumours of a Dark Lord whose agenda was to rid the wizard world of all muggle borns. To her, he just seemed like a coward who hid behind a black cloak, too afraid of people better than him. She hadn't thought that he would gain such popularity, that there would come a day when the wizard world that she had grown to love, that she now knew as her own world would be a threat to her. The thought that just because her parents weren't wizards themselves, she would be looked down upon, be hunted like a wild animal had never occurred to her.

**You howl and listen  
Listen and wait for me**

Tucking a stray strand of silky red hair behind her ear, she couldn't help but smile at the scene in front of her. She loved sitting on this small hill, the one that overlooked the Great Lake, especially during the sun-set. It was so beautiful; in fact everything about this place that she had called her home for the past seven years was beautiful.

She remembered the first time she had come to Hogwarts, she was so afraid that they would realize that she wasn't really a witch and send her away, but the moment she had set foot on the grounds for the first time, she had just known that this is where she was meant to be, this was where she could be who she really was; she was home; she belonged. Agreed that she had a good, real home with loving parents, but they didn't really get what she did at school, how much she loved it; she got a sense of belonging here with these people, her people; that she never got at home. At home her sister thought her to be some kind of a freak and her parents were slightly scared of her, they thought her to be weird, but she didn't really blame them. Here she could be who she was, without fear of rejection, without the fear of being feared. Magic was a part of her, a very important part, and this is where she could perform it without someone hissing _freak _in her ear.

But now this very place was condemning people like her, the ones that were termed mud-bloods. Her emerald eyes filled with tears, she couldn't go back to her old life, the one without magic, but she was scared to continue living in the world that hated people like her. It was so unfair, one world she didn't want and the other didn't want her.

This prejudice had torn her world apart, literally. One of her best friends had turned his back on her, all because of her 'blood'. At first, she had thought that he was putting up a front in front of the others so that she was safe, and she was pretty sure that had been true. But slowly, he was becoming colder, the act wasn't an act anymore, it was the truth. His words had started to sting, the truth in them ringing clearly for everyone to hear. But still, she had fought, not ready to give up something that had been there for so long. But then he had called her a mud-blood, for everyone to hear and she had had it. She stopped. In the beginning had someone asked her why she was trying to hard, when evidently he didn't care she had proudly said, "But I do." And that had been enough for her, but somewhere along the way the reason had stopped making sense. She realized that she just scared to let go of something she had for so long, it was like letting go of a security blanket; a childhood toy. But you don't see people lugging around small blue or pink blankets decorated with teddy bears or beach balls; those are stashed away in the attic so that someday you can take it out and remember the happy times you had with it. So she had let go. And it had hurt her, a lot. But she was determined to remember the good times, with the boy she could remember, the boy she knew; not this cold unfeeling man that now replaced him. She closed her eyes, fighting back the tears.

It was so unfair. She didn't want to be caught up in the war of blood. She was just happy the way she was; an average girl with not so average dreams. But here she was, caught up in the one of the biggest wars in history and there was nothing she could do about it. She, among a few others she knew had been approached by their headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, to join a covert group dedicated to fight against the Dark Side. But did she want to be a part of the war in which people of her birth were the main targets? Wouldn't it be better if she just left all this and settled somewhere far away, maybe America or Australia, even? She was scared, alone in new, cold and uncaring world. She hadn't believed it would really come down to all this and it had and she wasn't sure if she wanted in.

But she didn't have a choice anymore. She was in this no matter what. She wasn't going to run away, because it wasn't in her nature to do so, she was a Gryffindor for Merlin's sake! This wasn't some nightmare, where she could just open her eyes and all the monsters would disappear. If she wanted the monsters to go away, she was going to have to do something about it; she would have to be a part of the nightmare. She was almost of age, an adult now. Soon would come the day she got out of this place, that had protected her for so many years, what was she going to do then? She thought of the amount she had learnt in this place, because of these people, because of magic. She had come to realize that her powers didn't define her, but she gave her powers definition. Like this Voldemort for example, his powers weren't evil but he used his powers to do evil things. And she had power too, and what was she going to do with it, nothing? Is this why she went to Hogwarts for all these years? What if Voldemort got so powerful that he would be a threat to Hogwarts itself? Where would the future generations learn magic, learn all the lessons that life had taught her? She wanted to make the world a better place, for her, for others, for the children she would have someday.

And yes, there was a very good chance that she might die, and the thought did scare her. But just because you got scared, doesn't mean you don't do the thing, right? So if the day should come, then she would die proud knowing that at least she had tried. Only then would she be able to live with herself, which didn't really make sense 'cause she would be dead, whatever.

**Echoes of angels that won't return**

And it wasn't like she was going to be all alone. She had, she smiled at the thought of, _him._

**He's everything you want**

And just the thought of him filled her with warmth, hope and… love? She shook her head; it was too soon to think about love, they had been dating only 6 months now. Or was it really something she could think about? When she thought of her future, all she could think was him. When she thought of home, all she could see was him sitting in front of the fire of their common room, or the head's room they shared. When she thought of love, she could see his warm hazel eyes, smiling and twinkling.

**He's everything you need**

She laughed out loud at the thought; she was in love with him. Who would have guessed? He would take care of her, let her take care of him, she just knew it. She wasn't alone.

Just then two strong arms encircled her waist from behind, a warm mouth nuzzled at her neck. She turned around in his arms, put her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply. She loved being in love.

**He's everything inside of you  
That you wish you could be**

She inhaled deeply, taking in his fresh, clean smell, resting her head on his chest. He tightened his arms around her, pulling her even closer to him. She felt so safe, when she was in his arms, like nothing could ever harm her there.

**He says all the right things  
At exactly the right time**

She had shared her fears and thoughts about the war with him, and he had been so supportive. He, being one of the ones approached by Dumbledore, knew what a big deal the decision was, but he was so sure that he wanted to fight the injustice. After all, the group was a big secret and he was relatively safe, being the pure-blood he was. His confidence, his enthusiasm, he was just so sure that this is what he wanted to do. And the way he talked about it, the injustice of it all, one would think he didn't fear death at all. His disgust at his kind for their thoughts and the anger he had for Voldemort, he was so amazing. She was a fool to not have seen it before. She wished she had that sort of confidence and fearlessness, the ability to believe in something in that unwavering manner that he did. But all she had was him. And somehow that was enough. **  
And he means nothing to you**

She was still in his embrace, comfortable. She looked up to his handsome face; his eyes were closed, he was content. Smiling, she looked around, thinking to herself that this was perfection. And then her eyes connected with a once familiar pair of cold black eyes, and she fought down a shudder. Pulling herself from the arms of James Potter, Lily Evans walked towards the young man she had seen, wanting to talk to him. As he saw her approach him, he turned his back to her, making his way back to the castle.

"Severus!" She cried out, a voice pleading him to stay. But he continued walking, away from her, out of her life, forever. And somehow, this time, it didn't hurt.

She didn't know why, but this time she didn't care.

**And you don't know why**

Shaking her head, she walked back to James, she saw him looking at her with sympathy reflecting in those hazel eyes. He had never liked her relationship with Severus, in fact, he had hated it. But now she realized that he understood her loss, 'cause even though he hated whatever it is she had with Severus he had accepted it. That's when she realized that while Severus was her past, James was her future.

And that was enough.

**A/N:** Just something I had lying around for a while.


End file.
